Our Dream of the Connected Home Could Become a Nightmare

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Our Dream of the Connected Home Could Become a Nightmare

The connected home is a futuristic dream, but if we're not smart it could be a nightmare. Tavis Coburn

It's 4 am and some noodly jam-band bullshit is spewing from my pillows as the lights flash throughout the house. My alarm clock is blasting String Cheese Incident or Moe or something, I don't know. You see, my house has a virus. I guess I should be thankful my rice cooker isn't DDoSing that game server in Thailand again …

This may sound ridiculous, but the near future of the connected home could be a total headache. Recent history suggests that's just how tech works: A bunch of upstart companies create novel but similar products. Then a larger company pounces on the burgeoning industry and rolls up the best features into its proprietary ecosystem, dictating the rules for future development and making everything that came before obsolete. All of a sudden, those of us who latched on to an Amazing New Thing find ourselves puzzlingly out-of-date compared to people who waited.

Don't believe me? How's that WiMax connection? What do you mean I can't get a cable box with a DVI connector? I'm still paying off this TV!

And that's just the relative handful of electronic devices we have now. When everything in our homes essentially becomes a networked computer, any minor change—physical or digital—could be hugely disruptive. It's not hard to imagine a future where an Apple or a Microsoft pushes a home OS upgrade and all of a sudden your kitchen no longer supports your old smart fridge.

Ever hear of Crestron? It's the original high-end home-automation platform. It's been around for more than 40 years and can control everything from your HVAC to your 4K TV. It's amazing! But let's say you poured $10,000 into your Crestron system a decade ago. Adding a new TV that works with it today would require professional intervention. So now you, who once delighted guests with a single-button movie-night setup—dim the lights, draw the shades, fire up the media stack—are envious of friends' $500 Sonos systems.

Don't be too jealous. Convenience isn't the only reason people shell out for Crestron. Yes, you may need someone to install it, but ultimately everything works. “It can plug into almost anything,” says Derek Goldstein, CEO of smart-home installer Casaplex.

Conversely, if the home of the future becomes another battleground for Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft—like it's shaping up to be—you can bet they're going to try to lock you into their services. Google-owned Dropcam could quit updating its iOS app, for example, and then you might have to augment your perfectly good Apple TV with a Chromecast or some other Google-made gadget.

The best way to ward off these problems before they metastasize is to embrace openness. “There's a need for a home-automation standard that's out of the hands of the bigger guys,” Goldstein says. “Otherwise Google and Apple will define the destiny of the industry.” By embracing open standards, we can ensure we won't be locked out of a device or forced to use only one type of connector at the whim of a single company.

The technology already exists: Pretty much every new smartphone supports Bluetooth low energy, the wireless standard that allows devices to communicate in the background. And the precedent for mandating a standard exists too. IEEE, the international engineering organization, does it all the time. Why do you think all your devices—Apple, Google, whatever—use the same Wi-Fi?

The point is, companies can and do rally behind a common denominator. And that's what needs to happen for the connected house to be something we'll all enjoy calling home.